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Valve's Gabe Newell Talks Linux Steam Client, Source Engine

Phoronix: Valve's Gabe Newell Talks Linux Steam Client, Source Engine

For those that have doubted the exclusive Phoronix claims for quite a while now that the Steam client and Source Engine are in fact being ported to Linux, the doubts can be nearly laid to rest. Even I began to wonder how long it would take before the clients for their popular games would be publicly released under Linux. However, after confirming the information perhaps a bit too soon, their level of Linux interest is much more clear after spending a day at their offices. A meeting topped off the day with Gabe Newell regarding Linux where he sounded more like a Linux saint than an ex-Microsoft employee. Valve does have some great plans for Linux beyond just shipping the client versions of Steam and their popular games on the Source Engine.

An interesting day for all of us!
Let's hope it doesn't take too long for the Steam Client to be released.
At least they would have all the Humble Bundle stuff to ship on release.
Once L4D2 is up and running it shouldn't take too much effort to bring over TF2 and CS.

An interesting day for all of us!
Let's hope it doesn't take too long for the Steam Client to be released.
At least they would have all the Humble Bundle stuff to ship on release.
Once L4D2 is up and running it shouldn't take too much effort to bring over TF2 and CS.

I think it's pretty obvious what's happening in the industry. Apple with the new Mac App Store, and Microsoft with their similar plans for a store (Plus their Games for Windows Live), the two big players are essentially trying to squeeze Valve out of the market. On top of that, there is increased competition from EA's Origin.

Valve can really do whatever they want on Linux, and it's probably making a lot of sense in their eyes. They have such a strong library of in-house games, it's hard to see them not succeeding.

I think it's pretty obvious what's happening in the industry. Apple with the new Mac App Store, and Microsoft with their similar plans for a store (Plus their Games for Windows Live), the two big players are essentially trying to squeeze Valve out of the market. On top of that, there is increased competition from EA's Origin.

Valve can really do whatever they want on Linux, and it's probably making a lot of sense in their eyes. They have such a strong library of in-house games, it's hard to see them not succeeding.

That has been the rumor for a while that Valve was thinking og building their own console. If they partnered with AMD for CPU and GPU they could have something on the market within a month. Think a custom mobo using an FX4100 or an A10 or faster and an HD7970 or 2, it'd be dirt simple to port games to, backwards and forwards compatibility and AMD ensures that far fewer games will use Nvidia's PhysX or CUDA. computer gaming as a whole wins as it pushes the GPU power goalpost further up.

Updating the console but keeping the same performance is trivial, in a year they'd be able to slash the price using a midrange HD8000 GPU and an equivalent CPU unlike consoles with completely custom hardware found on traditional consoles.

It is. This is a *really* significant step to making linux gaming viable, which is one of the reasons many people avoid linux as a platform (at least for home users).

The fact that Valve actually seem to be deeply invested in making linux work for them is also very good news, and quite surprising. I would have expected a half-assed effort commensurate with the short-term economic return they'd expect, which is, bluntly, small.

The Linux gaming scene just needs to be nurtured and lean on standards. Standards being graphics driver quality, graphics libraries and quality releases.

If Linux can build a gamer reputation then it will massively reduce the user base for Microsoft products.

What people use at home ends up being used in the office.

The only problem I can see is the United Nations pushing nations into post consumerism, meaning people wont have the money to purchase games unless there is a major rethink in pricing and maybe delivery.